The refresh boasts improved storage, performance and virtualization features, raising the stakes against Unix competitors IBM and Sun  not to mention Linux.

Although the announcement appears to part of be a rapid succession of Unix updates, Nick van der Zweep, director of virtualization and software for HP's Business Critical Systems, argued that customer update fatigue is not an issue. Van Der Zweep noted that HP provides quarterly updates for HP-UX.

"I wouldn't call it fatigue since the customer base absolutely demands that we add more features and security and they pick and choose when they want to upgrade," Van Der Zweep said.

The version 3 release is also not necessarily a major revenue event for HP either: existing HP-UX subscribers get version 3 as part of their subscriptions without additional cost.

Van Der Zweep boasted that version
3 provides a 30 percent performance improvement over version 2. Part of that
performance improvement comes via an improved I/O (stack.

There is, in fact, a limit but the limit is 100 million zettabytes  an amount that is
barely comprehensible. One zettabyte is equal to 1 billion terabytes (define).

Sun's Solaris Unix operating system actually now also deals in zettabytes with its ZFS (Zettabyte file system) which became part of Solaris in 2005.

With HP-UX 11i version 3, HP is also set to have its Unix certified under the UNIX 2003 standard, an effort to help define a set of APIs and functionality across Unix to allow for application portability.

Van Der Zweep noted, however, that most customer don't come to HP asking
specifically for the Unix 2003 certifications.

"We have the functionality there in HP-UX and to a certain extent it's
just a check-off item," Van Der Zweep said. "Customers don't demand
certification  they are just worried if their application runs well and that
the availability stands up over time."